


The Sound of Wings

by sinemoras09



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:48:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinemoras09/pseuds/sinemoras09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their shared history. Talia/Bane. Pre-series. No spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sound of Wings

_ I am neither good nor bad but a man,  
and they will then associate the danger  
of my life, which you know  
and which with your passion you shared. _

_ _ _

 

_  
_

1.

The boy never caught his attention.

The air was hot in the tunnels of the prisons, and there was nothing but the scent of clay dust and the occasional sharp smell of sweat as the other men walked past him, shackled and clothed in filthy rags. The first time he noticed, the boy had darted past him like an arrow, a flash of white cloth and bare feet, and Bane had startled, shocked to see a child among the warlords and rapists, and when he turned to say something there was nothing but dust and crumbling rock, a spray of filthy light puddling through the grates of the windows above them.

"He was born here," the old man said. He looked up at Bane with milky eyes.

 

******

 

The inmates whispered the story like an epistle: how the boy's mother, besotted with her lover and begging her father's forgiveness, took the man's place in the pit and birthed her child, swaddled with rags and straw to staunch the blood. "They keep her locked," the man said, and Bane's mouth thinned, because the man spoke with the air of one whose favorite toy was locked within the cupboards. "She never comes out. The kid's the one who goes for food."

The days passed. Slowly, the length of Bane's incarceration fell into a predictable routine: every few days, scraps of bread were tossed into the center of the pit, and the inmates would descend, scrabbling and clawing at one-another before invariably breaking out into full-out brawls. At first, Bane was content to sit and watch, wait for those men to gouge at each others' eyes and fall, too wounded to scrape up the precious bits of food trampled into the gritty floor, but eventually the waiting would turn to irritation and Bane would lurch upright, slamming one hard fist into the throats of whatever man was too stupid to be in his way.

The boy, the bastard son of the woman locked behind him, always somehow made it through the crowd, one thin hand clutching an entire loaf, before tucking it securely against his chest. The boy had large eyes and a thin, delicate mouth, and despite himself Bane found himself giving the boy a grudging respect. All his life, Bane had made it a point to be stronger, bigger, better than his enemies, and yet there was this boy, whose arms were like brittle sticks of porcelain.

It was dangerous, going after those loaves of bread. But the inmates were too busy fighting each other to notice, and the boy was too quick to pick up the pieces, literally, squirreling bread up his shirt sleeves and hurrying to his mother's cell.

 

*****

 

There was a scuffle. Bane raised his head and saw the boy and a man grappling in the corner of the cell.

"Oi! Brat!" the man said. The boy squealed - piggish, terrified - as the man's hand shoved hard against the boy's throat. "Where do you think you're going?"

The man shook the boy and apples rolled out from his sleeves. "You little prick," the man said. He slammed the boy's head with a sickening crack, and the boy slumped over, a streak of blood smearing against his temple. One perfect, shiny apple rolled by the side of Bane's boot.

The strike against the man's windpipe was enough to knock the boy out from his grip, and the boy dropped against the ground, terrified but still hungry enough to grab at the apples, which were rolling on the ground.

The boy ran. Pitched forward, stumbling and hugging the apples to his chest. The man groaned, lying on the ground.

The guards descended on him quicker than ever, and soon Bane was wrestled to his knees, face against the dirt and one hard knee shoved against his neck. There was never any shortage of discipline in the Pit, and Bane was not surprised to find himself at the receiving end of it--a whip to the back, one hard club against his face--and Bane pitched sideways, spitting blood.

An eye for an eye. A limb for every battered limb, and the man Bane had fought with was only a hair's width away from being beaten to death. After the incident, Bane was locked in isolation in a cell that received no daylight, and it was weeks later until he was let out and locked among the general populace.

That day, Bane was surprised to find it: a slice of apple, tucked neatly in his tray of prisoner rations.

The apple was sweet. The bread was good and warm.

 

*****

 

2.

There was something about the boy that Bane could not pinpoint. There was a quick intelligence lurking behind the boy's eyes, which were large and dark and fringed with dark lashes. His hair was cropped short, cut ostensibly with a rusted knife, and Bane could guess well enough the reason why: long hair was good for pulling, a weakness in battle, and the boy's mother was no fool.

"You pity them," the old man said, and Bane said nothing, pulling the cloak over his eyes and trying to sleep. "They fascinate you and disgust you. Rabbits in a den of wolves."

They were gentle, delicate things. Some nights, he heard the boy singing. Softly, cradled against his mother's side. They sang soft lullabies of older worlds, the lilt of their voices tracing the grays of night in a minor key.

"Shut the fuck up!" one inmate said, and all it took was one crack of Bane's fist to shut the man's filthy mouth. There was no purity here. No innocence. And yet here they were--that sad little family, the woman with the sad dark eyes and her son with the same soft mouth. That they lived made this hell a little more bearable, the single patch of watery light trickling through the inky dark.

"If I ever get her," one inmate said. He rubbed his hands, calloused and dirt under his fingernails, "If I ever get her, I'm gonna fuck her 'til her eyes bleed! I'm gonna fuck that pretty little mouth off, then I'm gonna shove it up her cunt and maybe cut out another little hole," the man said.

The woman knew. Knew, as much as Bane did, that her cell was her shield, the only thing that kept her safe.

Then one day, the warden forgot to lock the door.

 

******

 

The screams weren't the first thing that Bane heard, only the gleeful, "Get her!" and the rush of footsteps toward her cell. Bane ran forward, turning a sharp corner to see the woman shoved against the floor.

"Mama!" the boy said. Bane pushed forward, but there were too many bodies and he could see it, how the thin film of death settled over the woman's eyes. "Mama! Mama!"

They were raping her. Taking turns, one man throwing the other off, her legs jack-knifed open and smeared with blood.

Bane didn't think. Not when everything was a whirl of motion, arms and legs flying and slamming into the rockface. A knee to the gut, one man slammed and broken like marionettes, Bane fought and clawed and dragged the boy out by the armpits, howling with grief and rage. "Mama! _Mama_!"

She was already dead. Bane tucked his face into his arm, and covered his eyes.

 

******

 

In the prisons, the days bled into weeks and months, until Bane himself began to lose track of time. At the beginning of his incarceration, he etched out the hashmarks of days with a rusted knife, carving with jagged lines into the craggy rock before smoothing the rough cuts with the pads of his fingers. The blade dulled, and soon he realized the utter folly of it, keeping track of something that no longer exists. The sun rose and set and the men tried to scale the wall, inmates chanting and looking up into the harsh slants of light like supplicants under a healing balm, and Bane contented himself by reciting books, recounting from memory the stories he had read long ago.

For once, that inexplicable talent of eidetic memory seemed to prove its use, something to use to stave off the boredom.

The old man liked the _Count of Monte Cristo_ the best, and even the boy listened with rapt attention, craning his head past the iron bars in the cell across from him.

Now the boy was crying. Back facing him, legs curled up to his chest and hugging himself with thin arms.

The night was quiet. Around him, there were sounds of chains rustling and the occasional inmate coughing, but otherwise nothing. In the cell beside his, the guards had already cleared out the woman's body, leaving a large red streak where it was dragged across the floor, and Bane had taken the liberty to kick the straw over the red stain, tamping down the sticky wetness with his boot. The boy watched him, listlessly, before turning back and speaking against the wall.

"Did he do it?" the boy asked. Bane turned. "The man who was imprisoned. Did he get his revenge?"

Bane sat heavily next to him, frowning a little. "It is a story," Bane said, finally.

The boy said nothing, just stared silently at the wall.

He was sitting in what served as their courtyard, the one open space under the shaft of light, when he heard it, the sudden shouts of men, the burst of sound in the living space behind him.

There was a scuffle. Bane pushed through the crowd, a heavy hand sweeping away each shoulder of the men standing in front of him.

He saw the boy, bashed and bleeding, and one of the rapists cut. There was a bloody knife lying on the floor.

 

*****

 

The boy was unconscious. He weighed nothing when Bane lifted him up, carrying him across his shoulder and setting him on the bed. The cot was small and rickety and groaned with Bane's weight, but with the boy, the cot barely made a sound.

"Why are you protecting him?" the old man said, and Bane said nothing. There was a bloody gash against the boy's temple, and the boy's hair, shorn short against his scalp, was sticky with dried blood.

What did they inspire in him? The boy and his mother, the rabbits among wolves? There was a tenderness there, something fierce and deep and howling, that made him want to keep them safe. It was something deep in his bones, something he couldn't explain. Something human, though he had lost his humanity long ago.

The old man frowned, then left the cell. There was no one around them. Silently Bane dipped a rag into a basin of tepid water leftover from the day's rations, a habit he had cultivated given the number of injuries and scrapes he had sustained over the years, and began wiping away the streaks of blood. The boy's skin was perfect. Unblemished, so pale it was almost translucent. The boy had never known sunshine, but he knew hardship. Pain. Quietly, Bane daubed the cut above the boy's lip, before moving to the bruised line of the boy's collarbone.

The boy's breath was shallow. Rapid, eyelids fluttering and skin covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Bane would have to bind the boy's ribs to help him breathe better. The rags tore easily, and Bane pulled back the layers, only to be surprised that the boy was already wearing bindings across the chest. (Years later, he will wonder why it didn't occur to him then, the purpose for those bindings. But the secret of the boy's real gender was so well ensconced, it simply didn't occur to him.)

The bindings were in the wrong spot, and Bane wondered if the boy had tried to bind his ribs earlier, if he had gotten hit in the scuffle when his mother was attacked. Pulling out his knife, he quietly began to cut at the rags, one dull edge slipping against the boy's skin.

Bane's eyes widened. The boy had breasts. Tender breast buds, the angry red marks of his bindings still cut deep in his skin....

 _The boy..._ Bane's mind reeled. _The boy was a girl._

There was a noise, the sound of something clanging through the corridor, and Bane turned sharply, looking behind him.

He had to check. Had to see. His hands were shaking when he gripped the waist of the boy's pants. The rags tore again and Bane's heart was in his throat, seeing for the first time the soft swell of the girl's mound.

There were guards. Quickly, Bane covered her with a blanket, rising and standing against the metal bars.

 

*****

 

3.

Women did not survive the Pit. Even the girl's mother, who lived an unnaturally long time. Women did not survive.

They were setting up for execution. The inmates were too busy chanting and looking to pay attention to Bane, who was standing in the shadowed safety of his cell. Furtively he kept looking back toward the bars and then back at the girl, who was still unconscious. In the cell behind him, the old man shuffled and hunched by the wall, thankfully paying more attention to the scrap of bread in his hands than to Bane.

The girl started to wake. Her eyes cracked open. Slowly she sat up, guarding her side, before realizing she was naked beneath the blanket.

She didn't scream, but her eyes were wide. Frightened. Bane crouched next to her, quietly.

"Do not worry, little one," Bane said. "I will not harm you."

He spoke low, so that the old man couldn't hear him. The girl stared at him, then nodded, eyes never leaving his. He moved then pulled out a satchel: rations, extra ones he had saved. He tossed it onto the girl's lap.

"Eat," Bane said. "It will give you strength."

The girl nodded, then took the bread in her hands.

 

*****

 

She said her name was Talia. Only her mother and the doctor who helped birth her knew what she was; everyone else thought she was a boy.

"My mama said they would do bad things to me," the girl said-- _Talia_ \--and Bane knew without asking that back then, the girl had no idea what those things were, had thought death would be the worst thing inflicted upon her. Astonishing, how sheltered she was, growing up in this place. It made him hate the men even more for what they did to her mother, showing her, ruining her innocence. The girl shivered and Bane let her lean against him, pulling her against his chest.

They shared a cell. At first, Bane let her have the cot, choosing to sleep on a pile of straw on the floor, but soon the girl was crawling next to him, nudging her face against the broad plain of his back and snaking her thin arms around his waist. She was small and warm and despite himself, he let her curl beside him, turning to face her and tucking her body against his chest. Some nights she cried, muffled against his chest and tears wetting his shirt.

They always walked together, her dressed as a boy and Bane following, a hulking shadow. The other men didn't dare make comments to him, because Bane was Bane and the men were afraid of him.

One day, someone made the mistake to lay his hands on her, a new inmate thrown in the pit a few days ago. Bane found the man shoving the girl against the wall, beating her for a loaf of bread. It didn't take long. One yank of an arm, another twist of the neck, before the man fell dead in a crumpled heap. The other inmates watched him, hushed.

"The boy is mine," Bane said, and he gripped the girl's hand.

 

******

 

He was sleeping when he felt it: a kiss, feather-light, at the corner of his mouth.

His breath caught when he saw her crouched over him, hesitant, the spray of moonlight filtering through the open mouth of the ceiling. "Little one," Bane said.

She looked at him again. Dark eyes, liquid, reading everything. "Bane," she said. Whispered. Hushed. "Bane," she said again, and she knelt down again, her lips close to his.

Bane pushed up. Pushed a hand against her mouth, pushing her away. "Stop this," Bane said. A harsh whisper. "Stop."

Behind them, the old man snored. There were sounds of inmates sleeping, the occasional rustle of straw on concrete and shackled men shifting on the ground.

The girl didn't look at him. He could see it, the hurt building up at the corners. Even in the dim light, he could see the skin of her nose turning red.

"I am not that young," she said.

The rims of her eyes were red. Her eyes were focused on a spot on the ground.

"Little one," Bane said, and she started to cry. Greasy tears slipped down the sides of her face as she hiccuped pathetically. She hugged herself and he rubbed her back, not looking at her.

"It's just..." and she sniffed miserably, huddling up against herself. "It's just....if I am to be raped....like my mother was. If...if that were to happen. I don't..." and she took a shuddery breath, "I don't want that to be my first. Please," she said, and Bane shook his head.

"My mother was my age, when she met my father," Talia said.

"Sleep," Bane said, and he moved away from her. Her eyes were trained on the ceiling when she spoke to him again.

"My mother was not a girl."

 

*****

 

When Bane looks back on this, on their time together in the darkness of the Pit, he is overwhelmed with feelings of envy. She only had him, then.

There are moments. Moments despite himself, dark, despairing moments, when he will take stock of his life and all the little things that constitute it, and he will wish, more than anything, to be back in the Pit, and alone with her.

 

*****

 

5.

One day, there was a riot. Guards failed to lock the prisoners in, and the inmates were in a frenzy.

Talia screamed. Bane threw himself over her body, shielding her, taking her to the wall.

"You must climb, little one!" Bane said, but there was no rope and the girl was shaking. "Hurry!"

The girl looked at him. Her eyes were wide and she was afraid. "Bane--"

"Do not be afraid," Bane said, and she climbed onto the rock. Hands descended upon him, reaching for him.

She climbed. Even through the commotion, through the hands and blood and hazy film of pain, Bane could see it. How her body flew, birdlike, across the circle of light, catching the ledge and rising after.

 

******

 

6.

Years passed before he saw her again.

The men that rappelled down the mouth of the cave meant nothing to him, nor did the screams of the other prisoners as they were cut, hard slashes of metal slicing through leather and skin. Bane did nothing as his fellow prisoners ran and shouted and prayed, waiting silently for the men in dark robes to come at him, to slice at his gut and throat.

This did not happen.

Small hands touched the ridges of his face, traced the outline of his scars and the angry, weeping wounds.

"Bane," she said, but she was a woman now, her eyes rimmed with dark circles and lank hair falling over her face. "How could they do this to you?"

Bane said nothing. Pain settled on him like a thick blanket, but he felt the soft pad of her thumb dip against the swell of his lip. Delirious, he kissed it, one cracked lip parting, her finger pressed against the sensitive spot of his cupid's bow, the one part of his face that was left unmarred.

"Bane," she said again, and he closed his eyes.

 

*****

 

7.

They tried to heal him, deep in the frost of the Himalayas.

The venom he breathed only brought the pain down to where it was mostly bearable, the mask's sole purpose to keep the parts of his face from weeping and splitting open.

Bane slept. The pain in his body had subsided to a dull ache, and he fell into sleep quietly, breathing well for the first time in years.

There was a rustle, a soft scrape of something, like a boot being kicked off, and Bane was only partly aware of the small body nestling next to him, one small arm snaking around his waist. "Little one," Bane said.

"I missed you," Talia said, and with difficulty Bane turned, let her climb across his body to nudge her head against his chest. She was older now, but still just as soft, the warm swell of her body brushing against his chest. She fit perfectly against him, a broken branch fitted against the stump of an old tree.

He couldn't tell her what it was like. How the years spent without her seemed to bleed together, or how the whispered rumors of his face and hands seemed to fill the inmates with dread. And then there was the pain, the constant ooze of blood and pus from the pockets of his wounds, and the unbearable, intolerable stench of his skin, which was necrosed and slowly rotting away.

Her hands cupped the sides of his mask before she dipped low and kissed the side of his ear.

"May I kiss you?" Talia asked, and her voice was low, the weight of her body comforting on his chest. "Bane?"

"You cannot," Bane said, and Talia shifted against him. "You are just a girl."

"I am a woman," Talia said, and he felt her hand gently trail against his chest, slipping under his shirt and quietly undoing the buckle of his pants. "Please."

She dipped low again, let her lips softly trace the line of his jaw, the strap muscles of his neck. "I have been with many men. But none of them were you."

She lifted up the mask. Shifting her body, she rolled him onto his back, leaning over him and straddling his lap. He felt the straps loosen, a tightrope cut with a knife, and then the ruins of his face being exposed to the air.

"Bane," Talia said, and the pain was tempered by the coolness of her hands, the soft, gentle brush of her lips as she kissed him.

"I missed you," Talia said, and she rocked above him, hands softly at his chest as she moved, slowly, carefully, sliding down around him. "I missed you, I missed you."

 

******

 

There were gusts of wind outside, the ridge of moonlight cutting through the darkened snow.

She caught the skin of his jaw with her teeth, pulling him close with insistent hands.

"Little one." The darkness rolled and he felt her crash into his chest, desperate hands clawing blindly up his back. "What about your father?"

"He is asleep." She panted into her ear. "I won't let you stop."

Thought escaped him then, and there was nothing but savage thrusts and sweat and reddened skin, her legs crunched against his ribs, that sweet wetness sticky and swollen around him.

 

*****

 

8.

"You must leave," her father said.

Around him, the men of the League of Shadows were lying prostrate, large pools of blood coagulating into a sticky paste by his feet. Bane was stronger and faster and more committed to the cause, but her father held Talia back, one hand digging into her shoulder as she cried. "You must leave, _now_ ," her father said.

Bane said nothing. Around him, dark knights stood warily gripping their swords, fully expecting to be cut. They surrounded him, steeling themselves, a whole legion. He towered over them. Talia sobbed. and her father gripped her harder, staring out and down at him. "Father, please!"

Bane said nothing. Said nothing even as R'as al Ghul gripped his daughter and stared at him with hard, dark eyes.

He turned. One foot digging into the bloody marble, the line of men breaking to let him through.

Behind him, he could hear Talia's sobs.

 

*****

 

These are the things that men would die for:

Family, hope, love.

These were the things that men would kill for:

That sweet softness, the feel of her pressed up against his ribs. Small hands and small waist and the way her body curled into the recesses of his body.

Trust.

She breathed. Shifted against him, nuzzling into the hollow of his neck and nudging up against the line of his jaw.

 

******

 

9.

"I slept with him," Talia said.

"I slept with him. With Bruce Wayne.

I did it so I could hurt him," Talia said.

Around him, his men were working furiously in the caves, building, welding. Talia stepped delicately around a grimy puddle of oil and looked up at him again, waiting for a response.

"Did you enjoy it?"

"Of course not," Talia said. Her skin was soft and warm.

They walked onto the balcony. The night was cool and motes of yellow lights from the windows of buildings seemed to wink toward them in the violet dark, the shapes of buildings juxtaposed with columns of smoke stretching out toward the sky. Talia reached a hand and Bane stood beside her, and nothing mattered then, nothing at all, because the night was cool and silent, and because it was the two of them against the world.

"Bane," Talia said, and she gripped the hand clasped on her shoulder. "Tomorrow we may die. But it will be worth it, don't you think?" Her eyes looked up at his again. Wide and wet and fringed with dark lashes. The world will crumble and fall but this is what gives him purpose. This is how he shows his trust in her.

"It will be," Bane said, "a marvelous ending," and Talia said nothing. Just gripped his hand, and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Opening quote from Neruda. Everything else, not so much D:


End file.
